On being a Christian nation May 22, 2015

Every so often, my Facebook page fills up with comments from well-meaning people posting links to photos proclaiming the US as being a Christian nation.

Understand, I have no issues with Christianity as a religion and personal belief system.

My issue is with those that hide behind it while trying to promote other, less noble agendas.

Let’s look at some of the implications of these reminders about America’s Christian heritage.

First, the American population (primarily derived from white European ancestry) forget that we’re, in a sense, the new kids on the block. There were a number of indigenous peoples here before us. The Inuit in Alaska. Polynesians in Hawaii. Iroquois in the region of present-day New York. Seminoles in the Florida region. Sioux in the northern plains region of the Dakotas. Apache and Anasazi in the Southwest regions. To place Christianity at the forefront is to imply that the beliefs of these peoples are subordinate to Jesus, if they have any legitimacy at all.

Few, if any, of these “Christian nation” screamers seem willing to allow an exception for such civilizations.

Who would they grant an exception for?

Obviously, the Jews. Christ was a Jew, so we have to allow them entrance to the club.

The challenge is that the more orthodox sects of Judaism deny the divinity of Christ, as far as I understand. Do we disallow those sects, thus continuing to pick and choose who qualifies? Or do we admit them, even if they see Christ as another prophet of God at best?

And if we do accept them, it forces us to accept Muslims, since they also see Christ as a prophet, rather than as Messiah.

Ah, there’s the rub. The “Christian nation” crowd is, in reality, searching for a way to portray Christians as the good guys and Muslims/Islamists as the villains.

We haven’t even begun to look at eastern beliefs, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto …

Let’s set that aside for the moment and look at things from a Constitutional perspective.

To officially name the US as a Christian nation would call for a Constitutional amendment. This amendment would require the following, at a minimum:

— repeal of the First Amendment, or at least the establishment and free exercise clauses regarding religious rights.

— altering the Constitutional prohibition against office holders not being subject to any kind of religious test.

In effect, it would require paving the way for a religious mandate to hold high office. There’s a name for that mixture of church and state: theocracy.

Seemingly, we are led to believe that we would support such a theocracy, as long as it were a Christian one. However, the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, realized the danger that lie in that direction, thus the Constitutional prohibition and amendment.

Too, if we want to allow our nation to become a theocracy, why should we deny other nations the same right of self-determination? At one time, India was a Hindu state, but we remained silent when Great Britain tried to subjugate the Hindus to the ideals of the Anglican Church. Iran is a Muslim theocracy, and we condemn it for being such. ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State is another, and we condemn them even louder.

No, proclaiming the US a Christian nation is not about religion, it’s about trying to subjugate other people/cultures to our way of thinking, using religion as a smokescreen to justify it, and military might to impose it.